Parents and gender-role socialization
- Parental expectations for girls and boys differ even before the child is born
- Treat girls and boys differently in areas specifically associated with gender expectations such as toys, clothes, and participation in household tasks
- Talk more to daughters, play more with sons
- Ethnicity and race interact with gender in the ways parents socialize their children
4 dimensions of racial identity
- Racial Salience - the extent to which one’s race is a relevant part of one’s self-concept in a particular moment or situation
- Racial Centrality - the extent to which a person normatively defines himself or herself with regard to race
- Racial Regard - A person’s affective and evaluative judgements of her or his own race in positive-negative terms; the extent to which a person feels positive about his or her own race
- Racial Ideology - A person’s beliefs, opinions, and attitudes with respect to how she or he feels members of the race should behave
Gender differences in children’s friendships
- children tend to separate into same-sex groups that reinforce different relational styles: a constricting style for boys and an enabling style for girls
- Boys tend to have larger friendship groups with whom they share activities
- Girls tend to have fewer more intimate friendships
- Peers of the other sex become more important at adolescence
- Early maturing girls may be pulled away from their female friendships toward an emphasis on heterosexual relationships
Gender differences in achievement
- Parental warmth is negatively related to girls achievement and positively related to boys’ achievement
- Daughters of employed women have higher and less traditional occupational aspirations than do daughters of women who are not employed
- Teachers place more emphasis on mastery for boys than girls
- By the end of highschool girls are less comfortable with competition and more aware of the importance of cooperation than boys
- Sexual harassment interferes with achievement, particularly for girls
Gender differences in self-esteem
- Girls and boys do not differ in self-esteem during childhood
- In adolescence and adulthood a difference favoring men appears in some groups
Constricting interaction style
the interaction style characterizing boys; men have been accustomed to counter-dominance and competitive reactions to their own power assertions, and they now find themselves with partners who agree with them and otherwise offer enabling responses
Enabling interaction style
the interaction style characterizing girls; makes women less likely to receive the reciprocal agreement, opportunities to talk, and so on that they have learned to expect when interacting with female partners
Entity approach to abilities
the notion that each individual has a fixed amount of ability, which is revealed by his or her performance. If high-achieving girls accept this belief they will find failure devastating and as a sign that they are not smart after all
